Director's Cut: Black Keys: "Next Girl"

Behind the scenes with Chris Marrs Piliero: bikini babes and a dinosaur puppet

From Michael Jackson's "Scream" to My Chemical Romance's "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)", great music videos are bursts of sound and vision that leave an indelible impression. Director's Cut is a Pitchfork News feature in which we chat with music video directors about their creations. The men and women behind the camera are often overlooked in today's YouTube era, but this feature aims to highlight their hard work while showcasing the best videos currently linking around the internet. A little behind-the-scenes dirt couldn't hurt, too.

For this edition, we spoke with Chris Marrs Piliero, the man behind the absurd clip for the Black Keys' "Next Girl". The video features lots of girls in bikinis lounging by a West Hollywood pool, but instead of a rock or hip-hop star commanding their attention, the star is a puppet dinosaur named Frank. (The tiny green character had originally appeared in a cheap, one-take Black Keys viral teaser.) All the ridiculousness is undercut by self-deprecating text scrolling across the bottom of the screen, written by the Black Keys themselves. It's just dumb enough to be kind of genius. (Marrs Pliero also directed the playground-fight clip for "Tighten Up".)

After studying film at Orange County's Chapman University, Marrs Piliero got into the music video business shooting behind-the-scenes footage of bands like the Used and Linkin Park for MTV2 and Fuse. He got his big break directing a video for Green Day's brief side project Foxboro Hot Tubs. That video never saw the light of day, but it led to clips for the Pretenders and ads for Mastodon and the White Stripes. (All his work can be seen at his production company's website.)

Click on for our Q&A with Marrs Piliero, in which he talks about the inspiration behind his womanizing dinosaur and his thoughts about the Black Keys' prickly response to the "Next Girl" video:

The Black Keys: "Next Girl" [Director: Chris Marrs Piliero]

Pitchfork: How did you hook up with the Black Keys?

Chris Marrs Piliero: For the Frank videos, the label wanted to do a really simple placeholder video for "Tighten Up" as a teaser for the album. I was like, "Fine, I guess, but can't we think of something cooler?" and they said, "OK." So I drank a Monster and stayed up all night wracking my brain for something that's cool and dumb and simple. I love stupid kid shit that could still be for adults, like "Yo Gabba Gabba!" And there's all these weird and sometimes creepy old-school puppet stuff from the 50, 60s, 70s. You just watch them and you're like, "How is that for kids?" While I was thinking about that stuff, Frank was born. And then I did the first "Tighten Up" video in one take.

When I had the opportunity to make a second one with Frank, I was like, "Dude, he's got to be a pimp." I figure if I can get the opportunity to make a video with a bunch of hot chicks in bikinis, I'm not going to pass up on it.

Pitchfork: Was that dinosaur the first thing you thought to use?

CMP: I was going to do it with an Alf doll, but that got nixed. But Alf was definitely the inspiration behind this-- my little Alf doll told me to create Frank. I love Alf.

Pitchfork: When you auditioned women to be in this video and were like, "so you're going to be fighting over a little puppet dinosaur," what did they think?

CMP: A lot more girls were turned off by it than I would've thought. I didn't hide anything with the casting call. I was like, "This is an absurd video. There's this puppet and he's a pimp, and there's going to be tons of scantily clad bikini girls in a cat fight when they discover that he's sleeping with all of them." During the auditions, I actually had one of my buddies stand in for a girl so they all kicked his ass. Some of them literally kicked the shit out of my friend during the audition. It was awesome.

Pitchfork: I feel like the video objectifies women while also poking fun at objectifying women, if that's possible.

CMP: Exactly! That's the whole vibe of it. About 75 percent of the girls who auditioned were like, "Oh, fuck yeah, the Black Keys!" It's not like the concept was for a pop-punk band. This is a legit song. One thing that amazes me is the fact that as much love as there is for Frank, there's definitely some hardcore Black Keys fans out there who have animosity toward him. But the whole point is how it's so blatantly tasteless. It's just very tongue-in-cheek. I love tasteless stuff; I'm a big fan of the word "fuck."

Pitchfork: It's impressive how much of a personality Frank has, especially for such a rudimentary puppet.

CMP: A good chunk of the morning was spent with me going through what the puppet should do with the guy controlling him. Like, "OK, practice his hands rubbing together." That was very important to me. [laughs] It's very Mr. Burns.

Pitchfork: In recent interviews with the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach, he's talked about his dislike of the "Next Girl" video and said he told the label, "The only way I would allow this stupid fucking video on the internet is if you put this [scrolling text] on the bottom, and they did it." What do think when you read stuff like that?

CMP: Well, I love the band and we had a great time making the official "Tighten Up" video, so it's all good. As far as the text at the bottom, that shit was real. Honesty is a good thing. And it's rare. Kudos to them. It worked out perfectly, because I couldn't think of what to write at the bottom. If they liked Frank, "Next Girl" wouldn't have ended up being as cool. Frank is dumb. That's kind of the point.

And it's pretty damn cool to make something that people have such passionately opposite opinions about; there are people that want to have Frank's babies and there are others that want him dead. I love it.